


The Endless Puzzle

by MisguidedCreations



Series: Series A [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), doctor - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 17,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25589245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisguidedCreations/pseuds/MisguidedCreations
Summary: The planet Parallax; the greatest puzzle box in the whole universe. But just what lies at its centre? And what questions can and will be answered?
Series: Series A [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1831882





	1. Chapter 1

The Shrine to the God of Nothing was so dark Dr Dakota Miller could not see beyond the light of the gravity globe floating ahead. In the darkness all of his senses were heightened, and every noise caused his muscular form to tense.

They had reached a dead end. Ahead was only a cliff edge and an expanse of blackness of unknowable depth. _Something was wrong._ Miller sensed it before he saw it.

He heard the rumbling sound of something huge rolling towards them fast. He instinctively pushed his guide flat against the wall as a plasma boulder rolled past them. He felt its burning heat graze his cheek as it passed before plunging into the abyss. Miller turned to see another boulder coming, and another behind that. There was no other way, they had to jump. He seized his guide’s feathered hand, and they took a leap of faith into the blackness.

Miller felt the cold air whip against his face. He could see the plasma boulders crashing around them and hoped desperately that they could avoid being hit by the masses of flaming rock. He fumbled inside his rucksack and, just in time, found what he was looking for. He threw the anti-grav cushion at the floor which activated, slowing their fall seconds before they hit the ground.

They had landed in a vast room of ornate marble with a large plinth at the end bathed in moonlight. This was their destination, the final resting place of the Ruby of Elornia, the most priceless relic in the galaxy.

The only thing that stood in their way was what looked like a wide river of sand crossable only via a precarious trail of stepping stones.

Miller threw a rock into the pit and angry faces appeared in it like strange sand sculptures on a beach. A grim look spread across his guide’s beaked face.

“Sand demons,” he warned in his gruff thick accent. “They are drawn to the smell of blood.”

“Thank you,” Miller said with a smile, and shot his companion in the stomach before tossing him into the sand.

While the creatures were distracted by his screaming guide he hopped nimbly across the stepping stones, musing that it would have been wittier if he had said: “Sorry, but life’s a beach.” When he told other people this story he would amend this detail, he thought to himself as he climbed the stone steps to the plinth.

The stories of the Civilisation of the Zeroes told that if anyone became too greedy or self-obsessed the ‘God of Nothing’ would take their face. In their version of hell, the faces of all the sinners were sown together, still conscious, for all of eternity. It was for this reason they kept their most precious artefacts in guarded shrines where they could not corrupt people.

Miller supposed this must have been the origin of the story the nuns at his boarding school would tell of the ‘faceless man’ who came at night to take the faces of naughty children. He still remembered assemblies warning of the punishments for sinners and sitting imagining what it would feel like to have your face cut from your skull.

As Miller reached the plinth, on top of which sat the decorative golden box that housed the ruby, he remembered the first time he had stolen an object. It had been a beautiful golden Time Keeper’s watch that belonged to his classmate Kali Jexler.

Miller’s parents had always been too poor to buy him things like jewellery, and he had seethed with jealousy watching the pride with which Kali kept his watch. Polishing it each night and meticulously cleaning its parts before returning it to its velvet lined case. Miller had wanted that precious thing so badly. He told himself that Kali was a snivelling pathetic little creature. He didn’t deserve something so beautiful on his weedy wrist.

So, while Kali was sleeping, he had snuck over to his bedside table and taken the watch out of its case, leaving behind a stink toad they had been dissecting in Biology.

He had relished the distraught look on Kali’s face when he found his precious watch replaced by the reeking amphibian. He took a sick pleasure in comforting the boy, telling him he would help look for it and beat up whoever had taken it, while all the while rubbing its polished surface in his pocket.

At night, he had nightmares of the Faceless Man standing over him with his scalpel. For two weeks he lay awake waiting for his arrival, sleeping with a butter knife under his pillow ready to fight him off.

But the Faceless Man never came, and it was then that Miller realised that there was nothing, no gods watching over him or demons ready to punish him for his misdemeanours. He could do whatever he wanted because nothing mattered.

That year he had peed in Dashel Caine’s sock drawer, he poured bubble liquid into the school lake causing all its fish to float, dead, to the surface, and he had continued to steal anything he desired. Yet he never forgot the thrill of that first time, taking Kali Jexler’s watch, and his wonderful revelation.

As he prized open the box, for a moment he felt the strange joy again of taking something that didn’t belong to him against its owner’s wishes.

However, the box was empty. He frantically ran his fingers along the inside hoping to find a catch to a secret compartment but felt nothing but a scrap of paper which he pulled out and unfurled.

_‘IOU. One ancient relic. Love and kisses. Professor River Song’_

He hurled the box against the wall where it smashed. _That hag had beaten him to it again_. He was in the process of kicking over the plinth when his communicator went off. It was Recter, the insufferable owl creature who represented the Collectorate. Miller took the call but strained to catch what he was saying over the screams of his guide being ripped apart by sand demons.

“I can’t hear you over the--” He paused and yelled out to his guide, “Hey! Could you die a bit more quietly? I’m trying to take a call! Sorry Recter, you were saying?”

“The Collectorate requests your presence Miller. We have a job for you.”

“I am on a job,” he said grumpily.

“We will organise transport,” Recter said, and Miller looked to his right to see the glow of a teleport. It always unsettled him how easily they seemed to know where he was. With a flash he was in the pristine white headquarters of the Collectorate.

As someone who spent most of his time in caves and tombs, Miller never felt comfortable here; the space was too sanitary. Everything was so glossy that it shone. The room was decorated with expensive furniture which was changed several times a day to make sure it was in keeping with the very latest fashions, and the air stank of sickly-sweet perfumes.

Miller took a vindictive pleasure in stamping his muddy boots into the white carpet, and as a cleaning bot rushed behind him to sort out his mess he kicked it hard. It hit a wall and smashed.

“Greetings Miller,” Rector said, adjusting the glasses from the end of his beak. “You always know how to make an entrance.”

“What is this about? I was in the middle of raiding the Shrine to the God of Nothing.”

“Our intel says that River Song has already visited the Shrine to the God of Nothing and acquired their treasures for the Galactic Heritage Museum.” Rector replied smugly.

“So it would seem,” Miller said through gritted teeth.

“Even in death that woman is still somehow besting yo--” Recter began. But his words were cut off by Miller grabbing him in one of his bear-like hands.

“I have been told that your species can rotate their necks 270 degrees. I’ve always been curious what would happen if I turned it another 90. Talk to me about River Song again and you can be my test subject.” He hurled the bird at the desk where he landed covering the polished table top in feathers.

Coughing, Recter nervously replied, “Quite, quite, understood.”

“What does the Collectorate want me to do this time?” said Miller.

“A chance to cement your legacy as the greatest archaeologist in all the systems,” Recter said. “They wish you to acquire the treasure of the Parallax.”

“The Tombs of Zang Zang?” Miller said hungrily.

He had read of the folly of the Blood Emperor who had ordered for his plunder of a hundred planetary genocides be buried with him at the heart of the planet Parallax. This was a prize beyond any archaeologist’s wildest dreams. But he could not let the Collectorate know how keen he was.

“How much is the fee?” he asked.

“One trillion krill credits. But, there will be obstacles in your way,” Recter said, some of the smugness returning to his voice.

“I am well aware of the stories of the trials of planet Parallax, you stupid bird,” snapped Miller.

“Our intel says there are others who have been researching the Parallax,” Recter replied. “You must be most wary of this woman. The Doctor.” With a swish of his feathered hand he brought up a hologram of a strangely dressed woman.

“ _That’s_ the Doctor?” Miller said in surprise. “Indeed?” Recter raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t think she would be so...blonde? Well, I missed the opportunity to kill River Song, I will not miss the pleasure of killing her wife,” Miller smiled.

As he got up to leave he pushed the priceless Neo-Ming vase off Recter’s desk where it smashed on the floor.

“Until next time, Recter,” he said as he swaggered away, savouring the owl’s sobs over his irreplaceable artefact.


	2. Chapter 2

Emma gasped as she stepped inside the blue box. “Good heavens.”

The Doctor gave a knowing smile. “You like it?”

“Its interior dimensions are disproportionate to the outside ones,” she said in surprise.

“That is a lovely way of putting it. Matt, she’s your guest, I’m leaving the explaining up to you,” the Doctor said, walking off to check the scanners.

Matt looked momentarily panicked but tried valiantly. “It’s called the TARDIS which stands for T.ime A.nd R.elative D.imension I.n S.pace because it travels in - well - time and space. It’s bigger on the inside. It’s supposed to change its appearance to blend in with the surroundings, but it got stuck looking like a blue box. Any questions?” he finished lamely.

“Oh, a great many. Why ‘and’ and ‘in’?” Emma asked.

Matt was taken aback. “What?”

“Well in common parlance in my time when abbreviating we omit the connectives so ‘TARDIS’ would be ‘TRDS’ or phonetically ‘trds’.”

“I think you’ve just answered your own question,” the Doctor said with a smile. “Come over here you two, I want to show you something.”

She walked them over to the TARDIS door.

“Don’t worry, I’ve opened an air pocket around us to prevent us getting sucked out into space,” she said, reading their minds before announcing, “Emma, Matt, say ‘hello’ to the universe.”

She opened the TARDIS door to reveal the blackness of space outside dotted with distant stars, the red and blue spread of a nearby nebula and pieces of space rock drifting past like flotsam and jetsam carried by a dark sea.

In front of them was the first alien planet Emma had ever seen. It was a patchwork of terrains. She could make out strips of red sanded desert sat incongruously beside icy tundras and cities seemingly floating in the air. Surrounding the planet were two interlocking rings of ice fragments, and as the light of the sun shone through them they gave off strange beams like green searchlights.

It was the maddest most beautiful thing she had seen in her life. In that moment, her life her loss and her pain felt infinitesimally small, as insignificant as the footsteps of an ant in comparison to the universe, and it was wonderful.

“Are you OK?” Matt asked, possibly worried at the fact her eyes were the size of serving plates. “It’s a lot…to take in, I mean.”

“It is the most remarkable sight I have ever known,” she said breathlessly, still transfixed by the planet before her.

“You wait. You are going to love this,” the Doctor said with an expression like a child on Christmas morning. “The planet is called Parallax, translates as ‘the puzzle box’ or more literally ‘the planet guarded by a million riddles’.”

“So far, so Doctor-y,” Matt said.

“But here’s the best bit: Legend has it that at the beginning of everything there were the Gods of Parallax who created the universe and all species within it.

“But they knew that their creations were flawed and prone to being greedy and immoral, so they hid their secrets from them. They drew pieces of earth from across the universe into a vast puzzle with a giant to stand guard over their secrets.

“Nonetheless, they wanted to give their creations the chance to prove themselves worthy of their knowledge. So once a millennium, on the forty-second day of the forty-second month they would allow beings from across the universe to enter Parallax. The challenger who managed to overcome the puzzles of the planet would be deemed worthy of the secrets of the universe.”

“So you are saying,” Emma said, finally dragging her eyes away from the planet. “That today is the forty-second day of the forty-second month of the new millennium?”

The Doctor mimed checking her watch. “Well, what do you know, it is?”

“And,” said Matt, catching on, “You think these gods of Parallax might have information on the time distortions?”

“Gold star for Matt. I think it’s definitely worth a punt. First though we have to--”

But Emma had stopped listening. She was looking out of the TARDIS door at the space around the planet where hulking metal somethings were appearing out of thin air.

“Whatever is happening, Doctor?” she asked.

“That,” the Doctor said, “is our competition. Unfortunately, we’re not the only ones who want a pop at an access-all-areas pass to the secrets of the universe.” She walked over to the console and began tapping away at the controls.

“But isn’t that bad?” Matt asked. “More people means less chance of us getting to the planet’s centre in time.”

“Ah, but I’ve got something they haven’t,” the Doctor said with a smile.

“I do not quite follow your meaning,” Emma said.

“They don’t have the two of you. Now, if we are going to ace these puzzles then we are going to need equipment. Matt, can you grab my navigator? It’s in the broom cupboard of nightmares.”

“Sure, wait what?” Matt replied.

“Relax, that’s just what I call it,” the Doctor said, and placated he ran off, before the Doctor added, “it’s really more of a general closet space than a broom cupboard.”

“Emma, if you follow this corridor here you should find the TARDIS library. Climb to the fifth level, and you should find a section labelled ‘Volumes on Deadly Treasure Planets’. Can you please pick up the book on Planet Parallax. Oh, and don’t let any parasitic book worms in your ears.” Emma dashed off in the opposite direction looking concerned.

The Doctor was left alone. She occupied herself with reprogramming the console for landing when a voice from behind her spoke and she knew she could ignore her no more.

“Rule Number One. The Doctor lies.”

“I didn’t lie, not really,” the Doctor shot back.

“You didn’t tell them why you’re really here,” River said.

“Well,” the Doctor said. “Spoilers.” She turned around to see her wife’s reaction but found the console room empty.

“Were you talking to someone?” Matt said holding the navigator.

“Myself, mostly. Got to break the habit, last time I started talking to myself I almost broke World War 1 - well I was bored and I couldn’t find Jenga. You’ve got the navigator?”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “The broom cupboard was just full of sock puppets?”

“I told you, it’s the Broom Cupboard of _Nightmares_ ,” the Doctor said impatiently.

Matt had only known the Doctor for two days, but he was already starting to adapt to her way of life, and that meant accepting that sometimes she would comment about rewriting the laws of space and time the way someone might talk about dying their hair. It was strange how quickly things that would have been bizarre and terrifying only 48 hours ago now seemed normal. He wondered if this was a good thing.

His thinking was broken by the appearance of a breathless Emma brushing fluorescent green worms off her dress and carrying a large, dusty volume entitled _The Mysteries of Planet Parallax_.

She had noticed on its cover a large symbol which looked like a maze in the shape of a ‘P’. She supposed that this must be the symbol of Parallax.

“Awesome, nice job Emma,” the Doctor said, checking the TARDIS monitor. “Now we’ve just got to make it down there in one piece.”

“Why can’t we just dematerialise?” Matt said, trying to remember the TARDIS lingo. “Like we did in Victorian England.”

“Good idea. But the planet is running some kind of interference stopping me from getting a lock on. The other problem is that all those ships out there are not going to leave us alone, they don’t want us to get to the centre of Parallax and I don’t think they’re going to play nicely.”

“So what are we to do?” asked Emma.

“About the alien ships that want to kill us?” the Doctor said. “Well, this-” She pulled a lever and the TARDIS began plummeting towards the planet below.

The Doctor called to Emma, “Emma check that monitor, it gives a picture of outside tell me if any ships are after us.”

Emma ran to the screen and looked. “There’s a big brown one that looks a bit like...” she fumbled for an adequate description. “A big chicken made of metal?” she described.

“That’s a Rukka Warship. What are they doing Emma?”

“They are firing some manner of bright blue light.”

“Proton cannons,” the Doctor said, and pressed a button sending the TARDIS whizzing out of the line of fire.

“But Doctor, this ship is made of wood, right?” Matt asked. “How are we going to survive laser fire?”

“Really cleverly,” the Doctor said with a smile. “Check that dial and tell me what percentage the shields are at. Emma, have we lost the warship?”

“Yes,” she shouted back. “But now there is another vessel following us which looks like a big white shiny...contraption?”

The Doctor looked up at the monitor. “Oof, that is a midlife crisis ship if ever I saw one.” The ship emitted a blast of red light which hit the TARDIS head on causing Emma to be thrown to the floor. The Doctor helped her up apologising and asked Matt for a shield reading.

“72%,” he said.

“That is very, very not good. We need to find a way to lose them,” said the Doctor breathlessly.

She dashed around the console pulling levers and checking readings, sending the TARDIS speeding towards the planet’s surface, but somehow, no matter how much they dodged and weaved through the asteroid fields, the white ship was always on their tail.

“Shields at 10%,” Matt said in a panicked voice. “Just for argument’s sake, what happens if they get to zero?”

“Then we hope that those lasers are really ineffective on wood,” the Doctor said nervously sweeping her hair out of her face. She was sout of ideas.

“2000 years old and you still forget,” River sighed, sitting down and propping her feet up on the TARDIS console.

“Forget what?”

“You’re in a _time machine_.”

“Oh, right!” the Doctor said slapping her head. “Emma, I need you to look closely on the monitor and try to get the serial number on that ship.”


	3. Chapter 3

The Collectorate ship fired another ray blast at the TARDIS which whirled off course and Miller gave a savage laugh shouting at Crow Ned, the Weapons Control Officer.

“Blast them again. I want to see the pathetic wooden box reduced to splinters!” Crow Ned fired the blaster again but found the TARDIS had vanished.

“It’s gone, sir?” he said in puzzlement.

The smile slipped from Miller’s face. “Well find it!” he shouted furiously. “And programme the navigation circuits for landing.”

Crow Flies shuffled in his chair nervously. He knew that as Navigations Specialist he had to break the news to Miller. But he also knew that the last bird to break bad news to Miller was now the stuffing in the cushion he was sitting on and he secretly prayed that the ship would crash into a flaming wreck before Miller got his hands on him.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to do that sir,” he stammered.

“Why not?”

“Well you see, sir, the Landing Circuit is missing.”

Miller gave another roar. “How, could you be so stupid as to lose a Landing Circuit?”

“It’s, erm, not ‘lost’ per say, sir. It’s more like it was, well, never there in the first place.”

“How can that be possible?” Miller asked.

“Hi, sorry, I was just knocking around in the back of the ship trying to find where I left my yo- yo and I found this, looks like someone - I don’t know - travelled back in time and ripped it out of your ship’s core processor while it was still in the hanger. Well that’s what I’d guess. It’s not important is it?”

Miller turned to see the Doctor walking through the door followed by a boy dressed in a full suit and a girl in a dress that must have been a priceless ancient antique.

The woman was shorter than Miller had imagined, and yet even he had to admit that she radiated a sort of manic power.

“Doctor,” Miller said in an angry grunt.

“Oh, you’ve heard of me?” she said cheerfully. “Now play nice and I’ll give it you back. Just tell me who you are and why you’re trying to kill us?”

Miller stood in stony silence in which the Doctor was able to fully take in his appearance.

He was dressed in a leather jacket and a Fedora sat atop perfectly slicked hair. Everything from his chiselled stubbly jawline through to the shirt unbuttoned slightly too much gave the impression of a man going to a great effort to appear effortlessly handsome.

“So you’d rather suffer a fiery death than answer a woman’s question? Well that speaks volumes,” she said.

River whispered in the Doctor’s ear. “It’s Dakota Miller, remember? That narcissistic sociopath who works for the Collectorate?”

“Not ringing any bells,” the Doctor murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

“I told you about him when we took that Salsa class on Delphoid,” River added.

“The Salsa lesson? I was a bit distracted by the giant millipedes.”

“And _that_ black dress,” River winked.

“Behave yourself, we’re on a crashing ship,” said the Doctor.

“Aren’t we always?” River replied.

The Doctor looked up to see everyone in the room staring at her and realised her flirting with thin air had not gone unnoticed.

“Oh, wait a minute,” she acted, unconvincingly rubbing her eyes. “Now I can see you in the light I _do_ recognise you.”

“Seamless,” River applauded sarcastically.

“You’re one of the Collectorate’s goons.”

“What’s The Collectorate?” Matt asked.

“A group of greedy antique dealers who collect historical artefacts so that they can keep them out of sight for centuries to boost their sale value. Archaeologists without a conscience,” the Doctor explained. “Which makes you the hired help?”

Miller finally snapped. “Which makes me the greatest treasure hunter in the quadrant.”

“Well, second greatest,” the Doctor corrected. “Have you met the wife?”

“Deceased,” Miller said vindictively.

“And yet somehow that never seems to stop her. So, what’s the plan here? Steal the secrets of Parallax with your cronies for a group of aristocrats? Newsflash; we’re going to beat you to it,” she said.

Miller gave a smug laugh. “With what? I have all of the resources the Collectorate have to offer and thirty years of archaeological research.”

“And I’ve got a screwdriver and clever mates. Anyway, must dash - Oh almost forgot. You might want this?” She threw the Landing Circuit to Miller.

“I’d estimate you’ve got....1 minute 22 seconds till this ship crashes. Come on gang.”


	4. Chapter 4

Inside the TARDIS Emma was concerned. “Doctor?” she asked tentatively. “May I ask what the purpose of enraging Dr Miller was?”

The Doctor gave a sly smile. “Anger makes you impulsive and clumsy. If he’s going to be competing with us we want him angry because angry people make more mistakes.”

“So every time you rub people up the wrong way it’s really intentional?” Matt asked looking sceptical.

“Mostly,” said the Doctor unconvincingly. “Ah, we’ve landed. This is the good bit. I love this bit. Outside those doors is a whole new planet waiting to be explored.”

“What manner of things are out there?” Emma asked.

“I have absolutely no idea. Isn’t that brilliant? Only way to find out, open that door,” the Doctor said.

Apprehensively, Emma pushed the door open and stepped out. Her senses immediately went into overdrive. The first thing that hit her was the smell. The air was earthy and fresh with the slightest sweetness like the scent of fruit. She thought excitedly to herself as she breathed it in that she was taking in air from thousands of years in the future.

They were in a thicket of trees with leaves of a beautiful periwinkle blue and as they walked out of it they reached a stretch of fields where the sky above was filled with what looked like thousands of luminescent bubbles.

The whole thing was like something out of a storybook. She felt like an explorer in a new land, like Columbus setting foot in the New World for the first time.

Beside her Matt had a big dumb smile on his face and simply said, “Well this is very cool.”

“Do you think so?” Emma asked. “I was about to remark that the air was rather hot. Positively tropical?”

Matt attempted a clumsy explanation of the term ‘cool’ before the Doctor traipsed through, saving him.

“Righto. So according to the navigator we’ve landed in the middle of puzzle 303.” The Doctor indicated the tree behind her which bore the number 303 and the same labyrinthine symbol Emma had seen on the book.

“It says here that part of the challenge of the Parallax is working out what the puzzle is,” she said, consulting the large book. “So we need to scour this area and notice _everything_.”

Emma tried to focus on every detail around her, but everything was so incongruous to her that it was hard to pick out what could be a clue. She closed her eyes to try and get her head into gear.

She could hear running water and it occurred to her that water was often a vital part of landscapes in shaping valleys over thousands of years and being the most common site for ancient peoples to make their settlements. Perhaps the river was of some significance?

The Doctor was busy scanning a set of runes on the trees with her sonic screwdriver and Matt was looking closely at the grass.

Part of her wanted to call out and share her idea with them, but she also had the strangest desire to prove her theory. The water sounded like it could only be a small distance away, hardly a trek. So she ventured off in search of it.

With only a short walk she found what she was looking for, a small babbling brook. But there was no sign of anything that might constitute a mystery she realised disappointedly.

She was on the verge of returning to Matt and the Doctor, when she heard the rustle of wings and turned to see one of the peculiar crow workers of Dr Miller.

It was hard to make out a facial expression on the beaked face, but from what she could tell it was smirking at her.

“What do you want?” she called to the bird angrily. “I do not have any quarrels with you.”

She turned around and began walking back to the clearing but could hear the fluttering of the crow following. She turned to see him perched on another tree his head slightly cocked with the same infuriating smile.

“Caw,” the crow said, its smirk growing bigger.

“I know you can understand me, and I have no interest in playing your games. So please leave me alone,” Emma said, her sense of her unease growing. She turned away again and this time broke into a run as the crow flew behind her.

“Please, just leave me be!” she yelled. But as she turned she saw not the crow, but a giant bubble floating towards her. Before she had time to do anything at all it had enveloped her.

She immediately tried to burst the bubble wall to get herself out, but no matter how hard she tried to pop it, it remained. Through the semi-transparent film she could see the crow watching her and laughing its horrible cawing laugh.

“Caw, caw, caw, caw-t caught now aren’t you, my dear.” With that he flew off with a clatter of his wings still laughing.


	5. Chapter 5

Back in the clearing Matt was starting to worry; Emma had been gone for ten minutes now.

Maybe, she had just needed a bit of space to process, like him, the insanity of the situation they were in. But he remembered how well ‘getting space’ had gone for him at her aunt’s manor and decided he would go looking for her.

He called to the Doctor to explain what he was doing, but she seemed deep in thought and was talking to herself again. So he slipped away in the direction he had seen Emma walking.

Matt reached a brook but saw nothing but one of the giant bubbles floating just above his head. He was debating heading back to the Doctor to ask for her help, when he heard Emma’s voice.

“Matthew, help me!”

It was coming from inside the bubble and as he squinted he could see her trapped inside.

“Emma? How did you get in there?” he called.

“One of Miller’s crows trapped me. Please help me get out, the bubble keeps rising.”

“I can’t reach you,” Matt said, jumping into the air and trying to grab at the bubble. “Have you tried bursting it?”

“It might come as something of a surprise to you Matthew that, yes, when I became trapped in a giant and inexplicably rising bubble it _did_ cross my mind to burst it.” She shot back with the kind of sarcasm only a Victorian could muster.

“OK, OK,” he said, thinking.

He had suggested she come with them, had told the Doctor to take her. His life had been taken away from him, there was nothing left for him in Edinburgh, but she still had a life left to rebuild and he had convinced her that to come 3000 years into the future.

He didn’t know what to do, but he knew he had to do something. So, as a giant green luminescent bubble bounced towards him he followed his first mad instinct and leapt into it.

The bubble sealed itself around him. It was a strange, but not unpleasant, sensation to be encased in a sphere of flexible impenetrable water. For a moment he actually enjoyed the feeling of pressing his hands against the bubble’s wall and it change direction with his touch. But it was at this point that Emma’s voice brought him back to his senses.

“That was very gallant, Matthew. The problem is now that we are _both_ trapped in giant bubbles,” she said in exasperation.

It was then that Matt realised just how much trouble he was in. He repeatedly tried to burst the bubble but despite throwing himself against its wall nothing would penetrate its watery skein.

“Well,” he said, more to himself than Emma. “This is bad.”


	6. Chapter 6

The Doctor was scanning everything in sight in hope of finding a clue while River sunbathed. “I can always tell, you know?” the Doctor said without turning around.

“Tell what?” River asked flicking up her sunglasses.

“When you’re checking out my new regeneration,” said the Doctor.

“How?”

“Well the drooling is a dead giveaway,” the Doctor said turning around and smiling.

“Oh shut up,” River shot back. “You’re the newest model; I’ve got to work out the latest features.”

“Like?”

“Blondes have more--”

“Altercations with male chauvinists?” the Doctor finished.

“A very rude man told me that once,” River smiled. “Well I say ‘told’, he screamed it as I hung him upside down by his ankles.”

“That’s my girl,” the Doctor said.

“The outfit’s very…”

“Funky?” the Doctor said hopefully.

“I was going to say, ‘disco sailor’,” River shot back.

Doctor swished her grey coat grumpily and was about to retort when River squinted into the sky and said, “Is it just me or do those two bubbles up there look oddly...companion shaped?” She was pointing at the glowing green and red bubbles now ten metres in the air.

“Matt and Emma?” the Doctor said with a start. “I’m supposed to be protecting them.”

She ran through the thicket of trees towards the glowing orbs until she could see her companions suspended above her.

“What happened?” she asked.

“One of Miller’s crows trapped me,” Emma called down.

“And she was floating away so I decided to also get trapped in a bubble,” Matt said sheepishly.

“That is _literally_ the worst plan I have ever heard,” the Doctor said.

“I thought it was the kind of thing you would do?” Matt replied.

“Yes,” the Doctor said frustratedly. “But that’s not a reason to do it!”

“Oh, I like these two. They are cute,” River said playfully rubbing her hands together.

“The bubbles, what do you think they are?” said the Doctor.

“Iridescence Fluid I would say, which would give--”

“Five minutes until those two are dragged out of the planet’s atmosphere and those bubbles finally burst. Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of.”

“You already know what you’re going to do,” River said.

“How do you know?” the Doctor asked.

“Because I married you,” said River.

The Doctor leapt into a bright blue bubble and, using her sonic, oscillated the fluid propelling the sphere upwards to meet Emma and Matt.

“What should we do?” Emma asked desperately.

They were so high above the ground now that the TARDIS was barely visible below them.

Emma often had dreams of falling that would shake her awake in the middle of the night and she tried not to imagine what it would be like to experience the same sensation without waking up.

“OK, I need you to think calmly and rationally, that’s the only way we’re getting out of this alive,” the Doctor said.

“I’m trying,” Matt said. “But for some reason the thought of plummeting to my death keeps popping into my head.”

“I’m not going to let that happen,” the Doctor said. “But I need you to come up with everything you can notice about these bubbles.”

“They are impenetrable,” Emma said quickly. “We’ve tried to burst them, but it would appear to be impossible.”

“Good. But I need more,” the Doctor said, trying to distract them from the fact that their bubbles were growing colder in the higher altitude.

“The material they are made of, it feels like static water?” Emma continued.

“Good,” the Doctor said. “Would be nice to get your input Matt.”

“They’re bubbly?” he blurted out.

“Bubbly?” the Doctor said.

“I mean,” he tried to explain. “They must be made of some kind of alien material but they seem to behave just like the bubbles you’d play with when you’re a kid.”

“He is good,” River said with a smile.

“He sure is,” the Doctor agreed.

“And handsome, too.”

“Too far now,” the Doctor said before calling, “Matt, that is good!”

“Really?” asked Matt, surprised.

“Did you ever blow bubbles as a kid? I remember blowing my first bubbles, I was 103, so young. I loved it. They float through the air in all different sizes and shapes and you can run around popping them and sometimes, just sometimes, something magical happens. Two bubbles collide and they make--”

“One bubble!” Emma said excitedly.

“Exactly. So we need to combine our bubbles. Emma and Matt, you go first,” the Doctor said.

Emma leant hard against the wall of her bubble propelling it towards Matt’s. She could feel her heart beating in her chest and a tingling in her fingers. At first, she thought this was fear, but then she realised, it was excitement. The feeling of blood pumping around her body was exhilarating, it was like nothing she had felt before.

The two bubbles collided and as they touched everyone held their breath as the two skeins merged into one another, red and green blurring together like tie dye.

Next it was the Doctor’s turn and with a quick shove her bubble had joined the other two to form one large multicoloured sphere.

“What do we do now though?” Matt asked. “We’re still trapped.”

“The bubble has an elastic limit,” the Doctor said. “If we all push it opposite directions it will burst. The problem is, then what? We’re still falling to our deaths. Not to brag, but I’ve fallen from this high before and survived, but that was within 24 hours of regeneration. I still had my healing abilities. Right now we’d be strawberry jam.”

“Could we orientate ourselves towards water?” Emma suggested. “I have heard that water can absorb the shock of great falls.”

“We could,” the Doctor pondered. “But from this height there’s probably not a body of water on this planet deep enough to absorb our impact. We need something to give us air resistance to slow our fall.”

“I have an idea,” River said with her most mischievous of looks. “But it’s dangerous and involves undressing.”

“Don’t all your ideas?” the Doctor said in an undertone. “I’m all ears.” River whispered the plan into her ear.

“That might just work,” the Doctor said. “Emma, we need your dress.”

“What?” Emma said, as though the Doctor had asked for one of her legs.

“It’s the only bit of material large enough for us to have any hope of getting air resistance.”

“Of course. Right, I understand,” she said apprehensively.

“Matt, you’d better turn away. I don’t want to risk you seeing any ankles,” the Doctor said.

“You, too,” she muttered to River.

“You don’t let me have any fun.”

Matt turned around awkwardly and covered his eyes for good measure. But he could still hear the process of ripping and straining, which sounded like two people trying to dismantle a large marquee.

“OK,” the Doctor called, and Matt turned around to see Emma dressed in a white petticoat which still covered significantly more than any outfit he had seen on anyone out in on a Friday night.

In their hands was her dress which they had ripped to its largest size and tied together with rope from the Doctor’s bum bag.

“Are you sure that this is going to work?” he asked her.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied confidently before backtracking. “Maybe? It might – OK, ‘no’, but it’s the best idea we’ve got. Huddle up so I can tie us together.”

She bound them with more rope and then said, “On the count of pi: 1, 2, 3.141592653- go!”


	7. Chapter 7

They pushed at the walls of the bubble and with a great popping noise it burst and they dropped into the air.

It was only now, free from the bubble’s shelter, that the group realised how cold it was up here. Icy cloud vapour whipped their faces as they plunged towards the ground.

As they free fell tumbling toward the weird patchwork planet below each prayed that their ball gown parachute didn’t get tangled in its lines.

The ground was coming into greater focus now, they could make out the details of the ground below. Matt knew the closer they got to the ground the less likely it was that the parachute would properly open and slow their fall enough to prevent them crashing.

Just as he began to panic imagining what it would be like to hit the ground at this velocity, with a loud rustle their parachute opened above them and they were floating majestically through the air.

Objects below that had previously looked to Emma like death traps waiting to break them suddenly seemed beautiful. They soared over fields of crimson grass and mountain ranges that glistened with sparkling purple diamonds.

Beside her she could hear Matt give a loud whoop of joy which the Doctor soon joined in on and suddenly, against every ounce of decorum her aunt had ever taught her, Emma was whooping too. It felt oddly wonderful.

Whether through the Doctor’s navigation, or dumb luck they landed with a splash in a large black lake. The trio surfaced gasping for air and took a moment treading water to take in their surroundings.

There was something unpleasant about how still and dark the water was, and Emma felt a sense of foreboding. She tried to banish the thought that if you were swallowed into its blackened depths the water there wouldn’t be so much as a ripple to show you had ever been there.

The Doctor swam over cutting them free of the parachute rope.

“Are you both OK?” she asked.

“Well I was just saved from falling to my death from the edge of space by a bit of rope and an evening gown, so yeah, I’m great,” Matt said.

“We’d better try and swim to the shore so we can navigate ourselves,” the Doctor said and they began swimming towards the nearest bank of the lake.

However, the more they swam towards the shoreline the further away they seemed to get, until they had been swimming for fifteen minutes but were still no closer to it.

“We must be caught in some manner of current,” Emma said in a tired voice. Even without the various over-layers of her frock her petticoat was still heavy in the water making swimming difficult.

“We can’t be,” the Doctor said, withdrawing her device from beneath the water and examining it. “The navigator says we are definitely moving.”

“Then how are we no closer to the shore?” Matt asked breathlessly.

“It must be another one of the planet’s puzzles,” the Doctor replied. “Trapped in an eternal lake. Either you tread water waiting for help that won’t come, or you tire yourself out swimming to a shore you can’t reach. Ingenious, in a torture-you-to-death kind of way.”

“There is another way,” Emma said, and she realised darkly that she had known, deep down, from the moment they landed what they needed to do. “We swim to the bottom of the lake.”

Matt looked concerned, but the Doctor looked excited.

“Nice one! OK, we should start with a scouting trip to see what’s down there; average human can hold their breath for 1-2 minutes, I can probably manage a bit longer due to not being of the human persuasion, but not much. That should still give us plenty of time.”

Emma put the fact that her travelling guide had just admitted to ‘not being human’ into the already full box of things she would inquire about later as now seemed like an improper moment. Instead she followed the Doctor’s instructions of emptying her lungs of air and then taking a big breath in before plunging down into the cold water.

The moment Emma was below the surface she realised their mistake. The water around them was so black that, from the moment she submerged herself, she began to lose track of which way was up. She tried to suppress the thought that when she ran out of air she would not know which way the surface was.

The Doctor drifted past her and made the hand signal for ‘ok’ which she reciprocated although, as she followed the Doctor and Matt deeper into the darkness of the lake, she did not feel it.


	8. Chapter 8

As she kicked, propelling herself forward, Emma felt something slimy graze against her and turned to see the tail of a huge ugly something drift past. She looked down and saw that the water was full of these large creatures.

The closest thing she had to compare them to were the small whales she had read about in the natural history books of her aunt’s library. However, these creatures had many eyes and multiple rows of sharp teeth. The strangest thing about them though, was the fact that their mouths seemed emit an ethereal light which shone like lanterns in the watery gloom.

Many thoughts competed for attention in Emma’s head. _What was this manner of creature?_

 _How did they give off such beautiful light? What was the purpose of their large fangs?_ And yet what came to her most of all was a memory.

The memory of going down to the river and swimming in the cool refreshing water. Of her older brother splashing her as she laughed wildly. Of sitting on the bank with her father as he tried and failed to catch fish.

She had dearly loved to swim, the strange river smell of the water and the feeling of her body propelling itself weightlessly onwards.

For years after the untimely passing of her parents and brother Emma had begged Petunia to take her down to that river and her aunt always refused declaring that such things were, ‘Unbefitting of a woman of stature’.

Until one day she had finally conceded and taken Emma there. She had sat by the side of the river in a full frock watching sourly as Emma swam in the water.

But it had not been the same. The water, which had seemed a glistening flow before, now seemed dark and murky. Emma wondered what lay unseen beneath its depths and thought of the figure of Ophelia in the play she was reading _‘Till her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death’_. She had politely thanked her aunt for taking her and had never asked again.

Too late, Emma realised her mistake. She had started thinking about her aunt again and she suddenly became aware once more that she was underwater and holding her breath while surrounded by circling predatory creatures.

She started to panic and could feel her lungs begin to squeeze. She was running out of air and had no idea how to reach the surface.

Emma tried to signal to Matt and the Doctor, but they were too far away she had no hope of getting to them in time. Meanwhile, every muscle in her body felt like it was straining for oxygen.

Then, she saw it. Or did she imagine it, because she was thinking of her aunt? She thought she saw the flicker of a movement, a woman’s face, in the mouth of one of creatures. But that wasn’t possible. No person could survive in one of these moving beasts.

With the last of her energy she swam around to look at the creature’s mouth and again saw the woman watching through its open mouth, but this time she also noticed that behind her was what looked like a sitting room. There couldn’t be a sitting room inside the belly of a whale, could there? Anyway, the proportions were wrong, unless this creature was like the TARDIS, dimensionally disproportionate, then it must have in its mouth some kind of inexplicable window.

Emma’s could feel her lungs spasming, she was going to drown and this was her only chance. But how could she get the creature to swim close enough to her?

She remembered the creature’s large fangs and the answer came to her: _carnivore_. She pulled a pin from her hair and delicately pricked her finger squeezing it so that a trail of blood blurred in the water.

The creature stopped momentarily and then turned to drift towards her. Dreading what might happen if this didn’t work she kicked herself forwards swimming desperately as her vision darkened. With a final push she thrust herself into the creature’s jaws.

It was at this moment that the Doctor turned around and saw a pair of legs dressed in a Victorian petticoat kicking out of the mouth of a monstrous lake creature and knew she had to stop getting so easily distracted.

She swam over to the creature frantically and saw, not the bloody remains of her one-time companion, but instead Emma and a strange woman wagging their fingers beckoning her inside.

She signalled to Matt to swim over, but it was difficult. Other creatures had been drawn to the smell of Emma’s blood and they snapped their sharp teeth at him as he swam past.

The Doctor grabbed him and, to his horror, pushed him deep into the jaws of the lake monster which she was holding open with her other hand. He had no time to struggle as the beast swallowed him and he landed in a 1960s living room. Here he was greeted by a drenched Emma and the strangest looking woman he had ever seen.


	9. Chapter 9

The woman was at least a head taller than him and slender, wearing a long and beautifully embroidered dress. Her skin seemed to be made of grey tree bark and her hair, which reached down to hear waist, was thin twigs dotted here and there with amber autumnal leaves. Her eyes were pale grey and staring and gave her a wild look.

“Are you OK?” the woman asked. “Take count of your limbs young man.”

Bemused, but too tired to argue, Matt counted his limbs. “Erm, yeah they’re all still there.”

“Good, that will be a great reassurance to you, I am sure. I was watching you and your friend here through a puddle,” she said.

Matt looked around the room and indeed the floors and walls were covered in puddles just like the one he had fallen out of. Each was like a watery window to another part of the planet.

Through one he saw a pair of lizard-like creatures fighting robots, another showed a man wresting with a pair of trousers which appeared to be trying to strangle him and another a room of huddled elderly people.

The woman noticed him looking and said, “That one is the most dangerous of all. It leads to the Infinite Bingo Hall.”

Just as Matt was pondering what an ‘Infinite Bingo Hall’ could possibly be, the Doctor fell onto the floor spitting out a large stream of water. “Pretty wet that, wasn’t it? I’d love a cup of tea.”

“You are fortunate my friend,” the elderly tree woman said, going over to the table pouring a cup and passing it to the Doctor. She sipped it and wrinkled her nose.

“That tastes like--”

“Coffee, yes, and coffee tastes like tea. It is another way the Parallax likes to puzzle us” She gave a tired smile.

“What does the water taste like?” Matt asked.

“It tastes like water, boy, don’t be dense!” Tthe woman barked.

“No offence, but who are you?” the Doctor asked, taking another wincing sip of her tea- coffee.

“My name is the Woods of Willowseer. But my preferred title is ‘Bad mo--”

“Mother, we agreed we would call you ‘Mother’,” Emma chipped in, blushing.

“The ‘Woods of Willowseer’, eh? Don’t suppose you know the Forest of Cheem?” The Doctor asked.

“We were seedlings of the same season,” Mother said. “But that was many summers ago now.”

While the Doctor spoke to Mother, Emma walked over to the wall and began to examine something on it.

“What are you looking at?” Matt asked.

“To be honest, I am not quite sure,” Emma said, sighing. “I have seen this symbol everywhere. It was on the tree when we arrived and on the Doctor’s book and now here. I believe that it must be a symbol of the planet, but there is something not quite right about it that I cannot fathom.”

“Yeah, the whole place is pretty weird,” Matt said, staring into a puddle that seemed to show a Beatles tribute band made up of real beetles.

Their thoughts were broken by a sound like the sucking of a plunger and Dakota Miller and four of his cronies fell out of a puddle.


	10. Chapter 10

Miller slicked back his hair and straightened his fedora before noticing they were there.

“You,” he snarled.

“Me,” the Doctor replied darkly. “Surprised how not dead we are?”

“Not dead, _yet_ ,” Miller corrected, and his cronies gave cawing laughs.

He withdrew a blaster and trailed it across the group. “The question is which one of you do I want to kill first? I think I’ll shoot the girl just so I can see the dumb look the boy gets on his face when the light leaves her eyes. I’ll bet it will be hilarious,” he laughed.

“Emma,” the Doctor whispered. “Do you know how to waltz?”

“I can but not especially well. My aunt always said that I somehow had _three_ left feet,” Emma whispered nervously.

“Or maybe I’ll shoot off the boy’s legs,” Miller continued, caught up in his murderous musings. “Then watch him try to crawl away.”

“What do I look like, Bruno Tonioli? I don’t care if you’re good I just need to know you can turn,” the Doctor said.

“Yes, yes I can,” Emma whispered.

“Or maybe, the Time Lord. Who knows how many faces she has left? I could make a real day of it,” said Miller.

“Good. Mother I’m going to need you too,” the Doctor started.

“Obviously,” Mother said.

“Matt, you need to keep them walking right into the centre of the room.”

“How will I do that?” Matt asked desperately.

“Think fast,” the Doctor muttered.

“No, no, no. My therapist keeps telling me I overthink things. I need to be more mindful, kill in the moment and just enjoy it. I’m going to shoot the girl,” Miller finally decided pointing his blaster at Emma’s head.

“Bruno Tonioli!” Emma shouted in panic, and suddenly everything happened very turned to chaos.

The Doctor pulled Emma out of the blaster fire in a strangely elegant waltzing turn.

Mother blew glowing green spores at Miller’s two approaching cronies, whose feathered forms composted into soil before their very eyes, leaving only patches of beautifully flowering earth where they had once stood.

Matt, unsure of what he was supposed to do, jumped into the centre of the room and said, “Look over here!”

Miller gave a malicious smile raising the blaster before the Doctor called loudly. “BINGO!” Hundreds of elderly hands began reaching from the puddle beneath Miller and the crows pulling them screaming into the hole. As Miller was dragged under the surface with the familiar slurping noise they could just about hear the bingo caller cry, “Unlucky for some, 13.”

“We need to move. They will be gone but not for long. We are close to the centre of the Paralax, I can feel it in my roots. Here all paths begin to converge.”

She led them through a series of tunnels until they reached a long and darkened one lit by an eerie glow.

Along the walls were what seemed to be ghosts of many hundreds of different species watching them with deadened eyes.

“The ghosts of those who have tried before us,” Mother said.

“Well data ghosts,” the Doctor corrected. “When someone enters the planet the computer system scans and makes a record of them. These are more like saved files or records than ghosts.” Before adding, “But still very spooky.”

“Will they attack us if we mean to pass?” Emma asked with a hint of apprehension.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor replied. “Best test it out to be safe, eh?” And with that she took a few cautious steps past the ghosts scanning them with her sonic.

She paused at one and stared into its eyes standing there for a good few minutes as though frozen, until Matt called in concern, “Doctor?”

She snapped to as if slapped in the face and turned away from the ghost. “Oh, that is evil level clever.”

“What do you mean?” Emma asked.

“The ghosts have been programmed with paralysis beams,” said the Doctor.

“Which means in English?” Matt cut in.

“Have you ever had that moment when you’re sat in a class and you get bored and your mind drifts off somewhere else and you’re just there staring into space pretending to listen?”

“Sorry, what?” Matt said with a smile.

The Doctor ignored him. “Well imagine if you were trapped in that state forever, always just somewhere in your thoughts never coming to again.”

“We must turn back and find another path,” Mother said.

But as they turned they found that where their exit had once been was now nothing but rock face.

“We haven’t got a choice,” the Doctor said. “Just don’t make eye contact.”

The Doctor walked on ahead doing a funny sort of walk to keep her focus. Mother, Matt and Emma followed behind.

“Your sister is strange,” Mother said.

“She’s not our sister,” Matt replied.

“How odd,” said Mother. “You all have the same number of limbs, eyes, and you all have hair. You look very much alike. How do you know this woman?”

They both explained how they had, over the space of the last two days, somehow ended up travelling with the Doctor.

“So she turned up in your life and took you on misadventures that almost killed you and you decided to travel with her? I always forget what peculiarities you humans are.” She scratched the inside of her ear and a butterfly fluttered out.

“Well, yeah, when you put it like that it sounds bad but...” he trailed off.

“She is very...” Emma attempted. But also struggled to articulate just what it was that had led her to agree to travel with the Doctor.

At the time it had just seemed ‘right’ somehow. But the events of the previous evening now felt like a sort of dream. The reality of losing her aunt, her only living relative, had not truly set in and everything had felt oddly numb. She had wanted something to do, had _needed_ something to do and travelling into the far future to a deadly planet with strangers was what she had chosen.

Regardless of all she had lost, her adventure with the Doctor had been the first time in years that she truly felt alive and able to make her own choices and that feeling was intoxicating.

Yet looking back she wondered had it been the ‘right’ choice? The Doctor was the most extraordinary person she had ever met, but she felt she didn’t truly know her and she wondered if she ever would. She couldn’t escape the feeling that beneath her cheery hummingbird exterior were secrets the Doctor would never tell.


	11. Chapter 11

Meanwhile, the Doctor was trying very hard not to look any of the ghosts in the eye, including the one of her dead wife inside her own head.

“Are avoiding me?” said River.

“No,” the Doctor replied.

“Is this new incarnation terrible at lying?”

“No.”

“Perhaps I could slip into something that might catch your eye?” And with that River’s outfit changed. One second it was a sleeveless dress and belt with long boots, the next a military uniform, then a denim jacket and jeans with a gun holster before she settled on a black salsa dress saying. “There, now that’s more comfortable.”

The Doctor, against her better judgement, looked over at River. “You look really…that dress is very…you look like a lovely black swan?” she finished oddly.

“Thank you?” River said, with a bemused but satisfied look.

“I’m still mastering the quippy flirty thing. I’m not sure it’s very me?” the Doctor said, before adding, “You look beautiful.”

“So why won’t you look me in the eye?” River said softly.

The Doctor paused for a long time before finally voicing her thoughts. “How many times are we going to do this, River?”

“Do what?”

“How many times do I have to say goodbye to you. We’ve been saying goodbye since the day we met, it’s exhausting,” the Doctor said in a tired voice.

“Maybe this isn’t really goodbye?” River suggested cryptically.

“Oh, don’t do the face,” the Doctor replied in exasperation.

“What face?”

“The ‘spoilers face’. The ‘I know something you don’t’ face,” the Doctor shot back.

This time, it was River’s turn to look sad. “I think you’ve forgotten, Doctor. I’m just a memory inside your head. I haven’t got any ‘spoilers’ from you anymore. Well, maybe one: I know the secret at the centre of Parallax.”

“Oh, I gave up looking for that about an hour ago,” the Doctor said offhandedly.

“What?” For the first time River seemed caught off guard.

“Those two,” she pointed at Matt and Emma. “I promised to keep them safe and I haven’t. What’s the point of all the mysteries in the universe if you can’t keep the people you care about safe?”

“You’ve changed,” River said with a strange smile.

“I’m always changing. Changing is my thing,” the Doctor said.

“No, I’ve known all of your faces. Always the same silly Doctor stumbling into adventures and you’re still there...but you’re, different.?”

“Maybe I’m growing up?” The Doctor wrinkled her nose.

“Oh, I hope not. Although, I’ve got a thing for older men...and women...and--”

“I don’t need to know,” the Doctor said, cutting her off.


	12. Chapter 12

Emma looked over at Mother and noticed that orange leaves were falling out of her hair which was now mostly bare twigs. She wondered what this meant?

“Mother, what was it that brought you to the Parallax?” she asked.

“That is a long and sad tale that I would not want to bother such innocents as yourselves with,” she said heavily.

“Try us,” Matt coaxed.

“Perhaps, we might surprise you,” Emma added.

Mother laughed, “You remind me of my saplings. So young and yet so eager to be grown. OK, children I will tell you my tale.

“My planet was one of the woods and forest peoples, a beautiful green planet and the perfect ecosystem for my race. But as times changed and new technologies rose they brought pollution and corruption that weakened us and stunted our young and we feared that this might be the end of times.

“Until one morning, we awoke to find the pollution had gone and everyone was healthier than they had been in years. We thought our prayers had been answered.

“But it didn’t stop. In just a few months my people were reduced to little more than saplings within a year they had become seeds and then. Well then, nothing at all.”

“But how did you escape?” Emma asked.

“I wasn’t there,” Mother said bitterly. “I came home to my planet to find it devoid of life and pieced together what little I know from data reports. It was the greatest sadness I have ever known. I lost my people, my family, my children,” she said in a choked voice. “My people do not die, you see, we change, in death we are supposed to become great sentinels of the earth. But now that is no more.”

“So you’ve come to Parallax for answers?” Matt asked.

“What are you talking about, stupid boy? No, I have come for seed. That is what this planet is, an interplanetary database of the DNA of every living plant and creature in the universe. You know that?” she said incredulously.

“We were told that Parallax contained the secrets of the universe?” Emma said.

“Oh child, that is a fanciful lie put out to entice the gullible and stupid,” Mother said brushing her hair back and wilting her final leaves.


	13. Chapter 13

The Doctor and River had been walking in silence for a long time before River finally said, “I know you still feel guilty Doctor, but you _did_ save me.”

The Doctor gave a sigh. “That’s the problem River. You’re just a memory. Just a voice in my head telling me what I would like to think the real River would have said. Giving someone an eternity in an afterlife with only four other people for company isn’t really ‘saving’ them. It’s...”

As the Doctor remembered the fate of her wife she noticed the strange glow of the data ghosts illuminating the space ahead. She had the foreboding sense that something was wrong but it took a while for her brain to catch up with her gut.

“River, do you remember the technology for a data ghost?”

“Yes, it’s a copy of a human consciousness trapped in a machine.”

“Right, so these ghosts are here. Where is the machine?” the Doctor asked.

River’s face dropped. “Oh no, you don’t mean…like Canary Wharf?”

“Canary Wharf,” the Doctor said darkly and span around punching the nearest ghost in the face.

Her fist made contact with cold steel causing her to wince in pain. She shouted out to the others. “Gang, we’ve got to go! It’s a trap. These aren’t ghosts, they are robots hidden behind holographic projections.”

Her realisation had activated some sort of protocol and the robotic ghosts began to turn towards them and lurch forwards.

“Run, and don’t look them in the eye,” the Doctor warned, dragging Emma by the hand just as a ghost attempted to grab her.

They dashed down the corridor, the ghosts close behind them. Mother, the oldest of the group, struggled to keep apace and Matt put his arm around her pulling her onwards.

Emma reached the end of the corridor to find a dead end. “There is no exit,” she shouted.

The Doctor began scanning desperately with her sonic for some kind of clue while Emma paused transfixed by something on the wall.

Matt and Mother caught up, but Mother collapsed to the floor. With all the autumn leaves gone from her hair she suddenly looked much older and frailer.

“There has to be a way out,” Matt said hopelessly “There just has to.”

The Doctor kicked the wall in frustration but only achieved a searing pain in her toes that made her hop on the spot.

“How much do you love me?” River asked, and the Doctor replied, “River this is hardly the time.”

“How much?”

“River!”

“Because, I’ve found your exit,” she pointed to the high cavernous roof where, in the middle of the rock and stalactites, was a red door with a shiny brass handle.

“Oh, River. You. Are. Brilliant!” the Doctor yelled.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“There’s an exit on the ceiling,” the Doctor pointed.

“But there’s no way for us to get up there,” Matt said. “It would be far too dangerous to climb this rock and even if we could...” He trailed off, distracted by the ghosts who were now only ten metres away filling the corridor with their eerie glow.

“There is a way,” Mother gasped. “Maybe, it’s time this old girl took on a new form.”

“Mother, no,” Matt cried, realising what she was about to do.

“I couldn’t save my own people. Let me save you, stupid boy,” Mother said with a tired smile.

And with that her body began to change. Her feet dug into the ground and roots planted themselves into the earth beneath them. Her arms were lengthening and expanding into vast branches that spread sprouting leaves and blossoms and her torso grew into a huge trunk rising higher and higher.

“Climb me,” she called in a booming voice. “You don’t have much time.”

Then she called to the ghosts who had almost reached the end of the corridor now.

“On my home world they had a name for me. They called me Bad Mother Farmer! Now eat my bark.” And vines and creepers spread forwards to ensnare the ghosts who glitched revealing their robotic forms. Others were set upon by woodland creatures who crawled from Mother’s trunk. Squirrels and birds began ripping pieces of circuitry from their bodies as the machines tried to bat them off.

The Doctor started climbing Mother’s branches. Matt went to follow when he saw Emma was still stood staring at the wall.

“Emma, we have to go,” he shouted.

“But Matthew,” she said, remaining unmoved. “I have worked it out. I know what’s wrong with this symbol.” She indicated the large painted labyrinth on the wall, the same one they had seen in the puddle room.

“The problem is that the labyrinth has no solution. There is simply no way to reach the centre. It has to be some manner of clue.”

“Yes,” Matt replied kicking a robot wildly without looking at it. “And that’s great, but right now we need to run.”

He hoisted her up onto the Mother tree and they began climbing as fast as they could. Below them the robots had managed to subdue the woodland creatures and were gripping the wooden branches with their metal hands moving with terrifying efficiency.

Emma scrabbled to pull herself higher, but she could feel her hands slipping on the branches and splinters digging into her palms. All the time she fought the voice in her head that told her to look down. There was more than the fear of falling at stake, she couldn’t risk glancing into the ghostly eyes of her pursuers.

The Doctor reached the trapdoor and pulled the handle which mercifully swung open. She pulled herself up and then grabbed Emma’s arm and dragged her in before finally reaching down for Matt.

Matt grasped the Doctor’s arm, but to his horror, felt something gripping his leg threatening to dislodge him.

He glanced down to see a robotic hand holding on so tightly he thought his leg might break, but just as he was about to look into his attacker’s face Emma yelled, “No! Don’t look into its eyes!”

Matt shut his eyes tightly and kicked his legs out with all his might. He felt his body give a sudden lurch and he hit a hard wood floor.


	14. Chapter 14

Matt opened his eyes to find himself in what appeared to be a hospital waiting room. The Doctor was using her sonic screwdriver to lock the trapdoor behind them and Emma was sat in a chair beside a poster about colonoscopies, staring into space.

“OK,” the Doctor said, pulling out the navigator. “I don’t know how long that door will hold for, or where Miller and his cronies are, so we need to get moving.”

Matt went to follow her, but Emma remained perfectly still in her seat. “Emma, we’ve got to get out of here,” he said in a kindly voice.

“I just need one moment,” she said quietly.

“Look, Emma I’m really sorry, I wish I could let you both rest, but we are in danger and it’s only going to get worse,” the Doctor said.

“We just watched yet _another_ person die for us,” Emma said in a voice of forced calm. “And we’re trapped on a planet of ever-changing fiendish puzzles, possibly without hope of escape or rescue, and I am taking that in my stride. But in return for all this, I need to know who you are and why you chose to bring us here? Because right now, I suddenly feel that I do not know the slightest thing about you.” She was shaking, and her eyes were over bright.

The Doctor stood dumbfounded for a few moments until River took her hand. “You have to tell them why you are here. It’s the only way.”

The Doctor gave a sigh and opened a door leading them into a large reading room. She indicated for them to sit down on the large threadbare sofa.

“I haven’t told you the whole truth about Parallax,” she said. “I mean, I told you most of it. It _is_ a planet of puzzles that supposedly contains the secrets of the universe... but that’s not why I wanted to come here.”

She pulled out a heavily stuffed diary shaped exactly like the TARDIS.

“My wife and I were both time travellers, but we kept meeting in the wrong order, so we kept diaries to see where we were in our separate time streams.

“When she died I was given hers and I kept in for years, until one night I was bored and I decided to scan it.” She ran her sonic screwdriver over the cover and a hologram of a beautiful woman with big curly hair appeared.

“Hello Sweetie. If you’re watching this then I’m dead. But you already know that. Me dying was our first date. You prepared me to face that and now I want to prepare you for life without me.

“One day you are going to be travelling somewhere wearing a face I’ve never seen before and doing something stupid and brave that I’ve seen that a million times before, and you are going to miss me. Because no matter how many times you say goodbye, grief is not a straight line, it’s more like a wibbly wobble ball of...well you know.

“You can think that you’ve got closure and you’re fine and one day the smell of a particular perfume or the colour of a dress brings the pain back like it never left.

“When you have that day, I don’t want you to be alone and I want you to have something to do. You will find encrypted in this message the coordinates of the Planet Paralax. I found out about it in my studies years ago. I always meant for us to go and now I suppose we will. I love you.”

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said. “It was wrong of me to bring you here. But I will get us out of this and, when I do, I promise I will take you both somewhere safe and you won’t have to see me again.”

“I don’t think I want that,” Emma said. The thought came out of her mouth before she had really formed it. “I don’t think just being ‘safe’ is really enough for me anymore. Because...well grief isn’t a straight line, it is a winding road and, I, I would rather walk it with,” she stammered, “with friends.”

Without warning the Doctor pulled her into a bear hug. For a moment she felt awkward, it had been so long since anyone had held her like this, but slowly she warmed into it.

“Come on. Get in on the hugging,” the Doctor said to Matt who draped his arms half-heartedly around them.

“Is this a new thing? Do we do group hugs now?” he said.

The hug was broken by a ripping noise coming from the sofa and an arm pushed itself out of the cushions followed by the body of Dakota Miller.

His perfectly slicked hair was now messily plastered across his face and his pale blue eyes were circled with black bags of tiredness. Yet as he held his blaster up to them he looked oddly triumphant.

“What a cosy reunion. Hands up,” Miller smirked. They did as he instructed.

“It’s amazing the things you can find down the back of the sofa isn’t it?” the Doctor smiled. “TV remote, loose change, an incompetent archaeologist and a crow.” For at that moment one of Miller’s cronies did indeed drag himself out of the sofa.

“Ah, Doctor we meet--” Crow Ded started before Miller barked,

“We’ve already done that bit!” Trying to smooth his hair back into its usual perfectly quaffed state with his one blaster-free hand.

“Had a good time in Infinite Bingo, did you?” Matt asked.

“I won a set of steak knives,” Crow Ded said with a genuine smile before Miller punched him in the ribs.

“You will keep your mouth shut, if you want to keep it,” Miller said to Matt.

“Dr Miller,” Emma added, catching onto her companions’ tactics. “If you had the intention of killing us you would have done so by now, seeing as we are quite at your mercy. The very fact you have not suggests you need us for something and as such I have no fear in telling you that you still have a hair out of place, just there.”

Matt laughed, the Doctor high fived her, even Crow Ded gave an approving “Caw” which earned him a second punch to the ribs.

The laughter only stopped when Miller fired a blaster shot inches from Matt’s foot.

“You are right, Miss. I do need your help. But I do not need you unmaimed. If you get cheeky again, I will begin removing limbs starting with toes and working my way up.

“Now, according to my calculations we have one puzzle remaining. Legends tell that the final puzzle is the most deadly of them all and I am running out of expendable crow workers.” Crow Ded gave a loud gulp. “So, you are going to be my test subjects. So, let’s go.”

After an hour of trekking they reached a corridor where the floor was coated in sand and a vast door covered in runes stood before them.

“This is it,” River said. “The final puzzle.”

The Doctor held up a hand to stop the group and then ran it through the air and licked her fingers before immediately sticking out her tongue out in disgust, muttering, “That is clever. That is dead clever.”

“What?” Miller asked.

“They’ve laced the air with dream crab venom,” said the Doctor. “The closer we get to that door the less we are going to remember who we are and why we are here. We have to find another way.”

“We can’t,” Miller said. “That’s the final door. We’ve come too far to turn back now.”

“Why don’t you examine the sand on the floor,” the Doctor said innocently.

Emma picked some up and ran it through her fingers, it was smooth and soft to the touch, just like the kind she had felt on seaside trips with her family. But something heavier dropped into her hand. A pebble she assumed, until she brought it up to her eye and realised with a shudder that it was a human tooth.

“The sand is…” she stammered. “It’s people?”

“People get lost in their dreams on the way to the door and forget to eat and sleep and, well, forget to keep living.”

“Well those people were idiots,” Miller said. “We go ahead or I will start shooting you from the most politically correct target to the least.”

They stepped forward nervously. As they moved closer to the door Matt noticed that the corridor was starting to darken, the flaming torches remained lit but his own vision began to fade to black.

He knew that he was looking for _something_ but it was like his brain was filled with fog and he couldn’t remember what it was? As he fell asleep he reminded himself that he needed to focus on reaching the... _something_...he must not _something_ the _something_. He _something something something something_...

When Matt woke up his vision was a whirling kaleidoscope of images, as if the world around him was revealing itself all at once.

He landed on a large dark green something to try and orientate himself. Instinctively he ubbed the hairs of his legs on the surface of the dark green something in hope of finding anything edible but was met with only the tang of metal.

He could feel the rustle of the wind in his wings and the air travelling through his spiracles, so he tightened his suction on the surface to prevent himself being pulled off course.

Matt tried to get a sense of where he was. But it was difficult, everything around him seemed at once familiar and horribly distorted. The scenery moved at a strange and slow pace like slides being shown on an old film projector.

He crawled further along the surface and found he was glued to what seemed to be thin air.

Past the thin air were giants drinking from enormous cups of tea.

He tried to call out to them but all that came from his mouth was a coughing noise and the taste of bile.

So he tried another technique, raising his halters to orientate himself he took off flying towards the room of people. But with an unpleasant thud he found himself thrown back again. He tried again but the same thing happened. He tried again and again and again growing ever more desperate

 _THUD_ , _THUD_ , _THUD_...

It was after the fiftieth attempt that Matt began to think that something might be wrong.


	15. Chapter 15

Emma could hear the dull thud of a fly buzzing against the train window and a feeling of immense boredom washed over her.

Her legs felt stiff and she tried to stretch them out but found herself unable to do so. As she did this she had the strangest sensation, it was as though her abdomen was creaking. Emma had never experienced anything like this before and found it quite disconcerting. She supposed it must have something to do with the physical and mental exertion of last night’s events.

Her upholstery felt oddly itchy and she tried to reach up an arm to scratch it and found that she could not do this either. In fact, she realised with increasing panic, she could not move at all. She was stuck rigid in the same position staring at the same patch of ornately papered wall.

She heard the click of a door handle and from her fixed position she saw the legs of two women enter the room.

They were dressed in the long black mourning gowns that Emma had often seen her aunt in. The kind which simultaneously said, ‘I am very sad’ _and_ ‘I am very rich’.

They were gossiping.

“I came out of a sense of duty, but honestly it feels inappropriate to even have a funeral considering what she did,” the first said.

“Well you know they never proved anything did they?” the other one said conspiratorially.

“They wouldn’t though, would they?” the first said in an undertone.

It was only at this moment that Emma realised in horror that the woman was lowering her vast padded backside to sit on her.


	16. Chapter 16

The Doctor spent about five minutes thinking that she was a widowed librarian from Chiswick before coming to her senses and reaching the far more logical conclusion that she was in fact a face-changing time-travelling alien.

With this realisation she began to explore the room to try and get a grip on what the puzzle might entail. She reached for her sonic screwdriver to find not only did she not have it, but her trousers didn’t even _have_ pockets. It seemed pockets in a female outfit was a dream too big. She thought bitterly that she would have to do her investigations the old-fashioned way.

The Doctor looked around. She seemed to be in some kind of train carriage judging by the whirling scenery outside the window. The carriage didn’t have any of the seating compartments you would expect, instead there were an assortment of cushioned wooden chairs laid out in front of a coffin at the front of the carriage.

The chairs were not tethered to anything meaning the people in them were constantly sliding around the floor whilst somehow still making boring polite conversation as if nothing was happening.

The Doctor noticed two sour faced looking old ladies dressed in black gossiping in hushed voices about the event. She walked past them towards the front of the carriage stopping at a table covered in juddering plates of finger sandwiches filled with an unappetising looking grey kind of poultry, crisps and an assortment of dips.

She grabbed a handful of crisps before nearly bumping into a tentacled old man wearing spectacles on a beaded chain around his neck.

“So sorry,” he said.

“Nah, you’re alright it was my fault,” the Doctor replied.

As he began haphazardly dipping his tentacles into the prawn cocktail and slapping them clumsily into his mouth, she asked, “Excuse me? Odd question, but I don’t suppose you could tell me who this funeral is for?”

“Certainly,” the man said. “Why, it’s for ‘The Woman’ of course.”

“What woman?” the Doctor asked.

“ _The_ woman,” said the man, chuckling. “But you can see for yourself. It’s an open casket, she said the mourners deserved to see her body as it is a ‘magnificent thing’.”

The Doctor thanked the man and walked over to the front of the carriage to where the open casket stood, already braced for what she was about to see. Sure enough, inside the TARDIS blue coffin was River, her beautiful face still baring the knowing smile she had borne in life. The Doctor leant down to kiss her forehead tenderly.

“Boo!” River cackled with laughter as the Doctor jumped. “Got ya! Your face.”

“But, you’re dead?” the Doctor said, confused.

“Being dead is boring,” River said, running her hands along the coffin walls.

“River, how are you here?”

“Well, there are two options. The first is that the dream crabs construct their dreamscape from the highest available mind I.e. yours, and you were thinking of me.”

“Or?”

“Or, I’m just really _really_ good.”

“We need to find a way out of here,” the Doctor said urgently.

“You already know the way out. You’ve known all along the tricky part is accepting it.” River gave a wink, slumped back and returned to her distinctly dead state.

The Doctor sighed and began examining the features of the carriage for clues when she felt the barrel of a gun dig into her back and heard a voice whisper, “If you make a sound, I will shoot. Come with me.”


	17. Chapter 17

Meanwhile, Emma was experiencing problems of her own. The weight of the fat old woman was suffocating her. It was oppressive to be pinned down in this way and she could feel her springs creaking under the woman’s huge backside.

She thought sadly to herself that perhaps this was a cruelly perfect fate for her. She had finally retreated so far into her own world that she had literally become part of the furniture.

But just as she was growing accustomed to the uncomfortable sensation she noticed a pair of booted feet rushing past followed by a much smaller pair and she heard the whispered words, “If you even think about running, I will put a bullet in you.”

Something about the walk of that first pair of shoes was familiar to her, but she tried to place where from?

She had learnt, when living with her aunt, to detect an oncoming person from the sound of their footsteps alone. It made it easier for her to anticipate Petunia’s arrival and prepare herself. Emma could tell the quiet footsteps of Bessie the maid from the clomping feet of Arnold the gardener and her aunt’s sharp clicking footsteps. But who did these ambling feet belong to?

She wracked her brain and remembered almost dancing footsteps on the floor of the TARDIS. The feet belonged to the Doctor, which meant the Doctor was in trouble and she had to help.

But she couldn’t move, she didn’t even have muscles, it was impossible. Nonetheless, her friend was in danger and she was sick of being held down by this weight.

With a great effort she began to push at her four legs and slowly, ever so slowly, she rose up. She then began to tense her springs and felt the woman on top of her shuffle uncomfortably.

She pushed again, harder this time and the woman bounced a few inches into the air. Finally, with a great effort, she gave her body a huge push and the woman was thrown out of the chair and onto the floor with a shriek.

Next, with a clicking noise she flexed her wooden legs and began to haphazardly trot out of the room.


	18. Chapter 18

Matt had achieved the impossible and managed to finally tumble his body through the crack of an open window. But he found the whirl of different colours, movements and sounds in the carriage even more overwhelming than the world outside. In his dazed confusion he drifted unconsciously towards the beautiful ethereal glow of the white light overhead.

But as he headed towards it the air itself felt suddenly hot and he bounced back tasting something like burning. Unperturbed he rallied himself for a second flight when he saw movement in the periphery of his shattered vision.

Below, hundreds of pieces of the Doctor were walking down a corridor with a short person walking close behind her holding a gun. The Doctor was in trouble.

He flew towards her buffeted by the towering forms of giant commuters who attempted to swat at him with hands and newspapers, until he landed on her shoulder.

Matt thought nervously about how best to get her attention. In his current state there was no way for him to speak to her and he doubted he could even muster to write anything with his six legs, which he was absentmindedly rubbing together.

He settled on the one thing he thought might work. He flew into the Doctor’s hand three times in exactly the same spot. At first she startled but as he did it the second time she began to take notice. On the third try she surreptitiously cupped him inside I’m one of her hands and everything went dark.


	19. Chapter 19

Miller had initially been disconcerted to find himself in the body of a seven-year-old boy. He had lost his rugged good looks, his muscular arms and his stubbled jawline.

But what he had lost in macho appearance, he had gained tenfold. As he walked through the carriages couples and old woman cooed at him infuriatingly and as they leaned over to fawn on him they left their bags exposed.

In his innocent new guise Miller had managed to steal eight purses, three watches and this gun before he had spotted the Doctor and remembered his mission.

He ushered her into an empty carriage, pushing the butt of the gun hard into the small of her back. She stumbled in, coughing into her hand.

“First thing I have to say is, you look adorable in that little sailor’s outfit,” the Doctor said with a wide grin.

“You are going to shut up,” Miller growled. “Or I will blow your head off.”

“What, with your tiny boyish hands?” the Doctor said with a snigger.

Seven-year-old Miller fired the gun at the window behind the Doctor, which shattered, and she fell silent.

“We are in some kind of shared dream space. So I need you to test a theory for me. In dreams where you are falling you always wake up before you hit the ground. So you are going to jump out of that train door.”

“That’s not how the dream crabs work,” the Doctor said with a sigh. “If you die in the dream you die in real life.”

“That’s just what you want me to think,” Miller said, balling his stubby hands into fists and preparing for a tantrum. “You just don’t want me to escape. Well we’ll see about that.”

He pulled open the emergency exit. But behind the door was, another exit. He pulled that door to reveal another door and another and another.

“How are you doing that?” he yelled madly at the Doctor in his child’s voice.

“I’m not doing anything,” she replied calmly. “It must be some feature of the dreamscape. Interesting, though.”

“Well I’ll just have to test another theory,” seven-year-old Miller said with the most maniacal look the Doctor had ever seen on such a cute little face. “Die in the dream. Die in the real world.” He lifted the gun once more.

The Doctor didn’t flinch. “Miller, buzz off.” She opened her right hand and a fly flew out of it and directly into Miller’s open eye.

He shrieked and in this moment of distraction she knocked the gun out of his hand with a whirl of Venusian Aikido and ran out of the carriage with Fly Matt perched on her shoulder.

As they dashed through the next carriage she saw a large Victorian armchair bounding its way through disgruntled passengers towards her.

“Emma?” she asked. “Oh that is the last straw! Humanoid flies I can take, murderous seven-year-olds I can take, but I _will not_ stand for the objectification of women! We are getting out of here.”

As the chair swept the Doctor up carrying her forwards through the carriage. Miller began to chase after them with a petulant scream of, “That. Was. Not. Fair!”

The chair kicked its way down the aisle sending conductors and food trolleys flying. The Doctor had to grip tightly to Emma’s cushioned arms to prevent herself being thrown off and ducked, narrowly avoiding a bullet overhead from Miller’s pistol.

“Bzzzzzzzz,” fly Matt spoke directly into her ear.

“Of course I speak fly,” the Doctor replied.

“Bzzzzzzzz.”

“OK, good point, but watch your language Matt there’s children here - well - a child trying to catch and kill us. But I don’t want him learning any other bad habits.” Another bullet sailed past them hitting a bottle of champagne which exploded.

“Emma?” the Doctor spoke into the cushions. “We’re running out of train, we need to slow down.”

Obligingly, Emma skidded to a halt just in front of the open casket. The Doctor span around wildly looking for something to defend herself with, but it was too late, Miller had reached them.

“I am going to enjoy killing you, squashing you and...” he paused, searching for the right words.

“Ripping the stuffing out of her?” one of the mourners suggested, helpfully.

“Thank you. And ripping the stuffing out of you. I’ll start with the Time Lord.” He raised the gun.

But at that moment to everyone’s surprise, the deceased sat up in her coffin yelling, “Get the hell away from my wife!”, and threw a dazzling ruby across the room which hit seven-year-old Miller squarely between the eyes knocking him out cold.

“River, you hit a child?” the Doctor said.

“Well, it was time he grew up,” River replied climbing out of her coffin to the surprise of the mourners.

“Right, first things first.” River clicked her fingers and the chair and fly disappeared to reveal Emma and Matt.

Emma stretched and looked around the room remarking, “Well that was most peculiar.” Matt walked repeatedly into the carriage window.

“We need to stop this train,” the Doctor said urgently.

“There’s no stopping it,” River said with a cryptic smile.

“Whatever can you mean?” Emma asked. “Wait, are you? How can you be here?”

“Death is boring. I prefer intelligent Victorian brunettes,” said River to a bemused looking Emma.

“Oy! River, focus,” the Doctor yelled.

“It won’t stop,” River continued. “Because it _doesn’t_ stop.”

“Thanks,” Matt said, shaking his head slightly. “Thatzzzz really helpful. Why can’t we just uzzzzzzzzze the exit?”

He pulled upon the carriage emergency exit and behind it, once again, was another exit. “What?” Matt exclaimed in confusion.

The Doctor smiled, “Oh, that is on the nose.”

“Isn’t it?” River said as they shared a look for joyous comprehension.

“But is it really that simple? That is maddening.”

“I am not sure that I follow?” said Emma.

“Well it’s like you said. The symbol of the Parallax is a labyrinth with no solution. This train literally has no exits. The solution to the final puzzle is to accept that there is no answer.”

“But that’s really stupid,” Matt said. “You mean all any one of those dead people had to do was give up?”

“It’s clever,” the Doctor said. “Everyone who comes to Parallax is looking for some kind of a solution to their problems: treasure, seed, answers. The last thing they are going to do is give up searching, that’s what makes it so impossible. So, I’m not trying anymore. I’m not _looking_ for answers.”

She sat down, and for a moment, it seemed as though nothing was going to happen. Then suddenly the train started to slow and a voice on the speaker system announced. “We have reached our final destination Parallax Station. All change please, all change.”

The Doctor turned to River, “You’re right. I have changed. You changed me. When we met I was full of guilt and pain, and now I see things I didn’t see before: hope and love and so much possibility that I know I’ll never get to share with you. I wish that I didn’t have to lose you and I don’t want to have to say goodbye again.” The weight of the words hit her as heavily as they had on Darillium, on Trenzalore, in the Library.

“Haven’t you been listening, Doctor?” River asked in exasperation. “Goodbyes are stupid.

“Goodbyes, funerals, puzzles are all just ways for us to pretend that we’re in control, that the universe we live in is a fair and ordered place and everything can have a satisfying ending. But it’s not. It’s big and messy and complicated and pointless.”

“This is a strange kind of pep talk. It’s not really making me feel any better,” the Doctor said sheepishly.

“Well it should,” said River, now serious. “Because, it means our choices are our own and in the end that’s all we have, choices. Our choice to step out of that door each day and make meaning out of the cold and the dark.

“Your problem is that you are always so obsessed with endings. You are always running because to you, well, you are avoiding fate and delaying the inevitable. That was how you viewed our marriage, as a beautiful tragedy that would end in me going to that Library, and that was _insulting_ ,” she said filled with passionate anger.

“Because we were not star-crossed lovers. I was not destined to fall in love with you any more than I was destined to kill you. I didn’t _have_ to go to that library and I didn’t _have_ to die there, I _chose_ to. Just as I chose every minute of our wonderful, stupid, chaotic marriage. And yes, everything ends, and yes, everyone dies but that does not mean you have to say goodbye to them or any minute you spent with them.”

“But River,” the Doctor said sadly. “When I wake up everything will be the same and you will still be dead.”

River smiled, “Oh Doctor, I have been dead this whole time. But when did I ever let that stop me?” And with that she was gone.


	20. Chapter 20

The Doctor stood there for what seemed like an eternity staring at the space where her wife had been. Eventually she pulled her jacket around her and said, “OK guys, we’d better be off.”

As they disembarked the train, Miller, who had a large red lump on his forehead, called after them, “Don’t think you’re getting away that easily.”

“Funny. I was about to say the same thing,” a guard said from behind him. He grabbed Miller sharply by the ear and yanked him back as he squealed. “We’ve had reports of a little brat picking pockets of the fine folk on this train and you fit the very description.”

There was something peculiar about this train guard, perhaps it was the fact he appeared to be holding a large scalpel or that he had no discernible face.

“No,” Miller said panicking. “Let me go! Make him let me go!” he pleaded to the Doctor, Emma and Matt.

“I would Dr Miller, but you are always one step ahead of us. I’m sure you can work it out for yourself.” Together they watched as the train bearing Miller pulled away into the distance.

To their surprise, when they turned around they were no longer at the station but instead in a room where every wall was covered in television screens, each one displaying another of the world’s puzzles. At the centre was a giant sat on a large swivel chair.

He looked unlike a giant from any book Emma had ever read. He had six eyes which were all pointing in different directions and his skin was green and scaly like a lizard’s. As they approached he turned to them and smiled displaying a mouth of sharp crooked teeth.

“So, you have solved the puzzles of Parallax?” he said in a booming voice.

“It kind of seems that way,” the Doctor said.

“Good. Then you will want your reward,” he replied.

He made a theatrical motion with his hands like a magician and pulled from the air three balloons on strings giving one to each of them.

They looked confused, but Matt was the first one to voice this. “They said that if we solved the puzzles that you would share with us the secrets of the universe.”

“Did they?” the giant said, and he began to chuckle loudly.

The trio looked at one another confused, but the giant just kept laughing and the more quizzical their expressions became the more he roared with mirth.

Emma turned to see the Doctor giving a snort and starting to laugh and then Matt bursting into frenzied giggles. _What was happening?_

“Now, come on. This is most improper,” she called to them.

But something strange was coming over her, a sort of dizzy lightness.

“I mean to say,” she tried to stop her mouth twitching. “People have died.” But she couldn’t stop herself. Soon she was laughing harder than she had ever done before, tears streaming down her face.

None of them were aware of quite how long they stood like this caught in the throws of this hysterical laughter, except that when they calmed down the giant and the hall of screens was gone. They were once more out in the open beside the TARDIS.

As they stood there in the fading light of planet Parallax Emma mused that a time would come when she would have to face the realities of what she had lost in the space of the last forty-eight hours. But for now she was content to watch the sun set as their three untethered balloons drifted into the unknown.


End file.
